Heir of Ashes (The Roxanne Fosch Files #1)

Chapter 15

I awoke sprawled on top of Logan. Well, not really. Only half my body was. My head was cradled on his shoulder, one arm around his broad chest, and one leg slung over his. Before I could quietly extricate myself, I realized Logan was awake, his fingers gently combing through my hair in soft, soothing strokes.

My heart skipped a beat, then went haywire, suddenly out of control. He paused, no doubt having sensed it. I made to move away, and his arm tightened around my shoulder. Not the one stroking my hair, but the other one hugging me to him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he murmured, resuming his gentle stroke from the top of my head to the middle of my back. “Relax.”

I did the exact opposite—I stiffened.

Pausing again, he asked, “Do you want me to stop?”

“Yes,” I answered instantly, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Why? Am I hurting you?” he asked in a reasonable tone.

My automatic yes was on the tip of my tongue. But it was a lie. I knew it; he knew it. His body was warm and solid and smelled faintly of soap. I knew if I moved away, he wasn’t going to try to stop me again. Besides, maybe my heartbeat wasn’t racing entirely out of fear. I relaxed a bit, and that was all the permission he needed. I closed my eyes and let myself enjoy the soothing caress of his fingers.

***

When I awoke again, Logan was no longer in bed. I stretched, yawned, and curled up again. I was relaxed, contented. I burrowed into my pillow and glanced casually at the alarm clock, bouncing out of bed in one leap. It was half past three in the afternoon!

Why the hell did Logan let me sleep this late? Why didn’t he wake me? Where was he? Had this been the plan—let me sleep so he could … what?

I padded barefoot to the half-closed closet and noted Logan’s bag was still there, but that didn’t mean shit. With a calmness I didn’t feel, I checked the bag with the JCPenney logo. The blueprints were still there. All seven of them. Alright, I exhaled softly. Hello there, paranoia. He hadn’t bailed on me. I left the bag with the prints inside the closet. Just then, I noticed the laptop on the desk. He wouldn’t leave that behind.

I recognized relief when I felt it. I didn’t want it. Sooner or later, one of us would leave. Getting attached was not in the plans. A friend would be nice to have, but this slight crush, coupled with the mistrust we each felt towards the other, would never help a friendship flourish. Besides, just because he stroked my hair until la-la land didn’t mean he wanted a friend.

Back in the PSS, I read a book called The Internal Wolf by a famous psychiatrist who wrote that emotionally-starved people tended to cling to the first person who showed them a shred of compassion. Was that who I was becoming? Was I so starved for compassion that I’d take it from a werewolf/vampire I didn’t even trust?

The ding of the elevator and approach of light footsteps intruded on my thoughts. It was Logan. I just knew it. I dashed to the bathroom, aware—and denying—that I wanted to be presentable before Logan saw me. It was a primal instinct, born thousands and thousands of years ago, passed down from female generation to female generation: vanity. Something I thought I had lost a long time ago. Turned out, it had been dormant, waiting for the perfect moment to resurface.

This wasn’t the perfect moment, damn it. I chastised myself even as I carefully shaved, then generously slathered the complimentary lotion over my legs. Fuck it, Roxanne. This isn’t the time, the reasonable voice inside me chastised. I scowled at the mirror. Why not? Because I was bruised and patched with stitches? Because it was Logan? Because I was still trying to run and hide? Probably all the above, plus timing, I told myself, examining the stitches along my hairline. From a certain distance, they could be mistaken for hair, but the faint green bruise surrounding it was another matter.

I cinched the bathrobe tight, making sure there was nothing exposed that shouldn’t be, before leaving the bathroom to gather some clothes. My eyes zeroed in on Logan without my consent, lingering on his broad shoulders. He sat at the desk, clicking and typing on his laptop. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed when he made no move to acknowledge my presence. A little of both, maybe.

What the hell is wrong with me? Get a grip, Roxanne, and get it fast.

I grabbed the first pair of jeans and a black sweater, some matching underwear—the new set I bought the day before—and crossed back to the bathroom to get dressed. My eyes moved back to Logan and zeroed in on his screen. What was that? I dressed in a hurry and returned to the desk. I came leaning to get a better look, and he changed the image to another one before I could make sense of it.

“What’s that? Where were you?” I asked, looking at him.

He hadn’t shaved today. He was dressed all in black: black long-sleeve cotton t-shirt and black jeans. It gave him a dangerous look. I looked away. I didn’t want to be caught staring. Again. He clicked on some folders and began downloading thumbnails without answering.

The first image was of a blonde girl, wearing some kind of school uniform. She might have been seven or eight, and she was smiling at someone who didn’t show in the picture. Logan clicked, enlarging the image, then turned to watch me.

“What?” I asked, taking another closer look at the girl, then shook my head. Something about her nagged at me, but … nothing. “Should I know her?”

Instead of answering, he showed me another photo. This one was of a blond man in a black business suit. Again, I found Logan watching me expectantly. I shook my head again. Whatever it was he wanted me to recognize, I wasn’t.

The third picture was of a forest-green BMW. The next two were closer pictures of the vehicle, showing the driver, a blonde woman, and the passenger, the blonde girl. Even before Logan clicked and enlarged the image, recognition jarred me. For a moment that felt like an eternity, I felt numb. Empty. A second passed. Two seconds. Then feeling slammed into me so suddenly, so hard, I had trouble breathing.

Hers was the image that haunted my nightmares and my dreams. An image I could draw with my eyes closed. That woman was my mother. The same blonde hair tied in a high ponytail, the same straight nose. She hadn’t changed much … except for the hair. Where it once bounced off her shoulders, it now seemed to be as long as mine. From this angle though, it was hard to tell for sure. If she’d aged, it didn’t show.

Logan clicked, and a closer image appeared, taken from another angle. This close … yet so far … A tightness gripped my chest, a heavy weight pressing against my lungs. Gone was all the anger and resentment of the past decade, leaving behind the joy, the longing. The love. Along with a tiny bit of doubt.

Who was that child? The gears in my mind began to turn. Without my prompting, Logan returned to the first image, the one where the child was smiling off camera. Now that I knew where to look, I could see the resemblance. The same pale complexion, the same large almond-shaped eyes. Although her eyes could be a dark brown instead of black like mine. Like hers. The little girl was my sister. I had a sister.

And then the implications hit me, cold and sharp. I had been replaced. The girl looked like an average seven or eight, but she could easily pass as a small nine. My mother had moved on. And the child looked like a miniature of her. That was what my subconscious had recognized. I might have inherited my mother’s black eyes, but everything else came from my father: the dark hair, the height, and even—she’d told me once—the bone structure.

Was that it? I resembled the man she had once loved and lost too much? Or was it because I had inherited his other nature? Or both? How could a mother, no matter how freakish the child, dispose of her like it was nothing? How could a mother carry a child for nine months, care for her for twelve years, then just let her go? Didn’t I mean anything to her? Couldn’t she just have fought for me, then left me to the streets to fend for myself? Anything was better than the torture … But what if she didn’t know? Didn’t know where I was, how to find me, what was happening to me?

She served them custody papers … Tommy’s words came back to me. But my father was dead. Wasn’t he? Could he still be alive out there somewhere, have gained guardianship and, without Mother knowing, sold me to the PSS? After all, he was a monster. He’d send postcards of exotic places in my name to her. She’d have no reason to think about all the horrors I’d been through. Especially if she knew nothing about the world of the preternaturals. But my father was dead. Otherwise, Logan would have said something. Wouldn’t he?

I glanced at him, at his watchful expression, and looked away. He hadn’t denied anything, but he hadn’t confirmed either. He’d told me he was going to check his information, nothing else. Should I pressure him? What if what he told me was wrong? What if he suspected my father was alive, but wasn’t sure?

I needed to talk to my mother. I needed to hear it from her. I was aware of Logan’s eyes on me, reading the slideshow of emotions on my face. I wiped my expression as cleanly as I could and straightened my posture.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly. “Let it out. You don’t have to hide from me.”

“What do you know? Your mother didn’t throw you away like yesterday’s garbage and start a new life without you.” The words came out sharp, surprising even me.

“I never met my mother. The woman who raised me died when I was … incapacitated.”

“That’s not the same, so don’t patronize me.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t you dare look at me with pity in your eyes,” I snapped, ready to strangle him. “Even you are holding back information that’s important to me.”

“I don’t want to. Would you rather I tell you something and find out later on, after you build your own conclusions, that I was wrong?” I didn’t answer, and he went on. “I know how it feels to be unwanted. My mother,” he smiled thinly, his eyes suddenly cold, “literally threw me out like garbage. Archer found me with the rats, wrapped in blankets beside a garbage bin, in mid-December in New York. I learned at a young age I was better off without her.”

“You’re lying,” I said, but there was no conviction behind it.

Logan turned back to the laptop and logged out. I had a feeling this wasn’t a topic he usually talked about and wasn’t going to bring up again.

“Is he the man you’re going after? This Archer, the person you’re risking your life for?”

Logan jerked his head in a nod.

We didn’t talk about our pasts after that. Logan ordered food, and we discussed our next steps while we ate. The plan was simple. Logan would drive me to the Sierra Oaks Vista address later that night and take me to a spot at the back of the house where we’d be concealed, and security would be easier to disarm. He’d then create a distraction for the PSS guards posted a few blocks away. Logan suspected they had rigged the house’s security to their monitor’s feed, otherwise, they’d have been posted within sight of the property.

After that, I was on my own. I had around forty-five minutes before the PSS realized they had been duped and returned to their post. It was a simple plan, but I was suddenly full of doubts. So many what-ifs, so much could go wrong.

***

I glanced at Logan from the corner of my eye. His grip on the steering wheel was hard, evident from his white knuckles, and his jaw was clenched. Was he regretting our bargain?

On the backseat were the rolled-up prints I’d given him, along with his laptop and a few belongings. After we parted tonight, we wouldn’t be seeing each other again. He had paid for three more nights at the hotel to give me some time to figure things out after my meeting with my mother. He’d also paid me ten thousand dollars in cash and promised to FedEx a new driver’s license and passport to the Plaza Hotel in a week. He’d have started the process of creating a new identity for me, but that was Archer’s expertise, so I’d need to lay low until he could rescue him. Compared with the sketches I had handed him in exchange for the exorbitant payment, I knew he was coming out on the losing end of our deal, regardless of his repeated reassurances.

I had explained the layouts to him first, quizzed him about the locations of specific facilities and labs before going over the prints with him one by one. I had shown him possible places his friend could be found at different hours of the day, then quizzed him on that too. Though he answered everything correctly, I still wondered if it was enough.

We parked a good fifteen-minute walk away from the Sierra estate and trekked on foot to the back of the house, where Logan went to work on the cameras with a wireless handheld device. He explained to me about scramblers, image freeze, and satellite interference as he worked, but I wasn’t really listening.

The night was cold and quiet; no animals were about. The trees rustled with stray winds, and the dark night was made even darker by the clouded sky. To our left was the ten-foot wall, to our right a shallow ditch full of decaying leaves, a few dozen semi-skeletal trees beyond that. It was the perfect horror movie set before everything went horribly wrong and plunged into Hell.

Why was I so unsettled? Because I was about to confront my mother after ten years? Why was Logan upset then? His jaw wasn’t clenched anymore, but there was this tangible tension rolling off him in waves. He was still dressed all in black, and the stubble on his cheek shadowed his profile. Did he know that? He’d approved of my dark sweater and new coat but suggested I change my jeans to something darker. To blend with the night, he’d said. The pitch-black, silent night.

“Don’t storm the PSS alone,” I blurted.

He stopped fiddling with his device and looked at me. His eyes were dark, of indistinguishable color, his expression unfathomable.

“I’ve been trying to reach a friend, but so far all I’ve got is his voicemail.” He looked back at the device in his hand and murmured, “I’ll wait a day or two, and if he doesn’t respond, I’ll have to go. It’s been a few weeks now.”

It took Logan about seven minutes to block the receptors and freeze the camera feed. “Mark five minutes before you jump the wall. Remember, you have about forty-five minutes.” He searched my face. “I know it’s not enough time but try to schedule a meeting place somewhere—somewhere crowded next time.”

I nodded once and waited for the next instruction. But all he did was squeeze my shoulder, and then he took off, running into the dark, to draw out the PSS surveillance van.

Despite the grim situation, I couldn’t help but watch and admire his grace, the predatory way he moved through the trees. A predator alone in the woods at night, accompanied by the whistle of the wind like the lament of a lonely ghost. It suited him. It suited him perfectly.

Six minutes later, I stood before the dark, ornate wood door at the back of the two-story mansion. Everything I had seen so far screamed money. Except there was no numbered pad to unlock the door, like Logan had warned me about. Just a normal-looking keyhole.

I raised my hand to knock, then lowered it again and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. No alarms went off when the door opened. I hesitated, recalling how Mother had been a stickler for rules, and one of them had been to make sure all doors were locked at night. I closed the door behind me and found myself in my mother’s spacious, clean kitchen. Besides the enormity of the room and its cleanliness, I saw nothing else. All I could think about was the meeting ahead. How would she react to seeing me? Would I get to meet the little girl? My heart pounded, causing my skin to tingle and my breaths to quicken. Cold sweat broke under my arms, upper lip, and hairline. Even my palms were clammy. The realization that I was going to see my mother after all these years was finally sinking in. A nervous flutter stirred in my stomach, threatening to bring back the meal I had consumed earlier. Would she hug me? Shed tears of happiness?

I followed the low murmur of a TV through a dark hallway to a large foyer, then down another corridor, stopping at the entrance to a spacious living room with plush beige and brown sofas. There, my mother sat alone, watching some talk show.

I cast my senses outward, but if someone else was in the house, they were out of my hearing range. Half of her face was in profile, and I took advantage of the moment to study her unaware. She hadn’t changed a bit, just like I suspected from her picture. Disappointment panged in my chest at her blue aura. Some part of me had wanted her to be the preternatural.

Her makeup was subtle and perfect. She always had a professional hand when applying it. She made herself look like a woman in her early to mid-thirties instead of her actual forty-six.

“Come in, child, or are you going to stand there forever?”

I jolted at the sound of her familiar voice and reminded myself this was no dream. She was really here. Or to be precise, I was. I hadn’t realized, though, that she had known I was there. She had always managed to catch me unaware, and I had to suppress the guilty feeling now. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. This was my right.

She hadn’t even turned to look at me when she spoke—as if my presence wasn’t worth her attention. That stoked my resentment.

“I was expecting you,” she said, taking me aback. “Come here.” She turned to look at me. There was not a single crinkle around her eyes or mouth to mark the passage of time. There wasn’t any surprise or delight shining in her eyes either. But there was resignation, as if my being here was an inconvenience she was forced to endure. I moved into the living room.

“You’re very brave to have come here,” she intoned with a thin smile, her eyes direct. “But then, you inherited your father’s stubbornness. And, I suppose, his recklessness. He’d do anything, no matter how foolish, if he had his mind set on it.”

“You never talked about my father before. I always thought it was because it was painful. Guess you just didn’t love him. I mean, send your own daughter to a torture institution, then move on with your life as if I meant nothing at all? You must have hated us both.” There was no stubborn tear trying to escape. No, just a bitter resentment that kept growing.

“Not at all,” she said, then in a much softer voice added, “I loved your father very much.”

But she didn’t say that she loved me too.

“Why? Why did you let them take me?” This was so not the way I had envisioned our reunion.

She answered without a hint of guilt, “It was the agreement. I was allowed to raise you until you reached puberty.”

I stopped pacing and stared at her. “What are you talking about? What agreement? You sold me to the PSS? I heard they pay a lot of money.” I looked around at the luxurious living room.

“Foolish child. Don’t be so obtuse,” she snapped, annoyed enough to raise her voice. There was a faint trace of anger in her eyes. “I didn’t sell you. Sit down so I can straighten some facts for you.”

She primly brushed an imaginary spec of lint off her light-blue skirt suit. Her calm attitude was the exact opposite of my imploding turmoil. I sat on a deeply-cushioned chocolate-brown easy chair that matched the light brown and beige décor, facing her. I didn’t think she could shock me anymore than she already had, but her next words proved me wrong.

“I was never your mother,” she announced in a calm tone—as if she was talking about something as mundane as the weather.

Shock had me jerking upright, denial like a fireball stuck in my throat. “What? No,” I croaked.

Her lips curled into a thin smile as she gestured for me to sit back down. I perched at the edge of the seat, my hands clenching. Any moment now, I’d wake up from this nightmare. Any moment now.

“I only met your father a few times,” she began. “But your mother and I, we were very good friends, distant relatives. To make it short, she disappeared for a while, and when she came back, she was pregnant, full of stories about this man she’d met. I was happy for her. I didn’t know there were beings out there before you were born, people with extraordinary abilities. Your mother never talked about your father being something else. Really, I don’t know what alerted the Scientists to his other nature, but they started watching him long before she met him.” She leaned forward and poured tea into two china cups, proving she had been expecting me. How?

“What I know is that after he was outed, he assumed the role of a mediator between his kind and the human government. Sugar?”

It took me a couple of seconds to shift gears and focus on what she was asking. You don’t just drop that kind of news on someone and expect their brain to follow the conversation. I didn’t answer and accepted the delicate china cup. My mind was raging with shouts of denial, trying to protect me from her words.

“Drink. It helps with the shock,” she instructed. She was calm, her voice nonchalant. I guess she really didn’t care what her words were doing to me.

I took a sip, didn’t taste it, and didn’t care that it burned my tongue.

“The Paranormal Society watched both your parents and kept a close eye on your mother. I think they hoped she wasn’t human, like your father. Or maybe, being a research facility, they already knew the high-risk pregnancy wouldn’t end well. Either way, I don’t think your father knew how risky the pregnancy was to your mother. I believe he cared dearly for her.” She sipped from the cup and lowered the china to the small plate. She wasn’t looking at me, and that irritated me. When you delivered such news to a person, shattering a fundamental belief, the least you could do was look them in the eyes.

She glanced at me then, her eyes calm, unsympathetic. “But the baby was not human; therefore, the delivery was not normal. I don’t know the details of the birth, only that your mother didn’t make it and that you had talons for fingers. Like I said, we were good friends, but I’m not sure if she was aware of the preternatural world and just didn’t tell me, or if he deceived her into believing he was human. Because I was her only living relative, I took you home with me.”

I looked down at my clenched hands and slowly unclenched them. They were trembling. How tiny would my talons have been then? What kind of monster was I? Because I was one. What else, besides monsters and demons, possessed talons?

“Just like that?” I asked softly. “You told them you wanted to take me home and they let you?”

“Not at all. It involved mountains of paperwork and legal documents, lengthy court appearances, a great deal of hassle and headache—but the end result was the same.”

I stared at her for a long moment. I had a feeling she was reciting a speech she’d rehearsed many times before. I supposed she always knew the day would come when she’d have to confront me with the truth. I just didn’t expect her to be so emotionally detached. For God’s sake, the woman had raised and cared for me for twelve years.

“Tell me about my father,” I finally said.

“Drink,” she ordered.

I did. I gulped the whole thing down, not caring that it left a burning trail all the way to my stomach. I slapped the china down on the coffee table, surprised it didn’t shatter. “Now, talk.”

“There isn’t much to say. Most of what I know is second-hand. I’ve already told you all I know.” She shrugged a shoulder, a dainty, elegant motion.

“How did he die?”

“He was found in the woods mauled and mangled, and it looked like a bear had attacked him.” She took a sip of her tea, her black eyes never leaving mine. “Although many believe he could have taken on a dozen bears and come out the winner. Some think he committed suicide.”

I thought I’d inherited my black eyes from her, but I guess it was just a coincidence.

“And my mother?”

“I found out about her death on the news like everyone else.” I could tell at once she was hiding something. There was tension around her eyes, even if her posture remained relaxed.

“Tell me more.”

“Not much that I could tell you. You look a lot like your father. The black hair, the bone structure.”

“But what was he? What am I?”

“What was he—who was he?” Her expression turned thoughtful. “I believe that is a question to be answered by each individual alone. You are,” she began, and my heart skipped a beat, “whatever you make yourself to be.”

I decided to come back to that topic later. “You mentioned an agreement with the PSS?” I prompted. This should have been my first question. Time was running out. Tommy’s words about my mother presenting the police with legal custody papers came back to mind.

“Yes. When they discovered the unnatural circumstances around your birth, they tried to claim you. Something about the government owning you, and how dangerous a creature you were. But your mother was my cousin and my friend. And I believed she would have wanted me to fight for you. So, I took them to court. I managed to obtain guardianship until you reached puberty. After that, custody was given to the Paranormal Society for their research and your safety.”

She spoke as though I was a piece of land. God, how could a person fake love and affection for twelve years? My mother looked at her watch and sighed, her expression resigned. “It’s time. You should have never left the Scientists before your time.”

There were footsteps on the stairs. I guess it said a lot about the state of my mind that I didn’t heed her words or pay attention to what was happening around us.

“You have a daughter.” And there. There was the part that had been stuck in my throat.

“Yes. She and her father went out of town this afternoon when I discovered you were to visit.”

“You knew I was coming today?” And obviously didn’t want me meeting her family.

“Yes. Your mixed-breed companion gave it away when he came snooping around.” Her words were but a decibel above the rush of blood in my ears. My inner alarm was blasting away, belatedly registering what her words were telling me and that there were way too many footsteps approaching.

There shouldn’t have been any footsteps.

I sprang to my feet, prepared to bolt through one of the three doors that opened into the room. I cursed myself for letting my guard down long enough to be snuck up on and turned to the door behind me.

But I was already too late. Twenty-seven minutes. I was supposed to still have time. Had Logan lied to me?

I looked at my mother. At Elizabeth. No, Logan hadn’t lied. She looked calm. There was no emotion there. That wasn’t true—no emotion meant her eyes would have been empty. My mother’s eyes weren’t by any means empty, they were calm. She didn’t care.

And the PSS hadn’t come from outside. They had already been inside. If they couldn’t just park on the street and watch, then where would they be? Upstairs. Waiting. With my mother’s permission. Probably even at her behest.

She had been waiting for me, had sent her family away. A surge of fear and anxiety tightened the muscles of my stomach, but I ignored it as best as I could and examined my options. Each of the three doorways had two guards, not counting the ones who had entered and scattered. Some had blue-tinged auras and wore The Elite’s uniform, while the others looked like plain soldiers. All of them were armed to the teeth.

It occurred to me this was the second time she had handed me to the PSS on a platter. I decided maximum brutality and aggression were my only weapons, even though I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. But I shouldn’t have bothered. The minute my talons appeared, I was shot with tranquilizers. Copious amounts of them. I had enough time to aim a hateful look at my mother before darkness descended.